ANALYSIS OF MARKETING AND PRICING OF PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION

As technological advances are made, it is important to evaluate the impacts that implementation of the technologies have on transportation system operations. This is particularly important today with the rapid development of Intelligent Vehicle Highway System (IVHS). One of the potential applications of IVHS technology is to transit fare collection systems. Advancements in electronic fare collection have led to interest in application of 'smart cards', magnetic tickets, automated fare boxes, and other innovations by transit operators throughout the world. There are potential benefits which may result from more advanced fare collection systems. First, they reduce the cost of processing riders and maintaining records. Second, they reduce the time required to process each passenger and, thus, the vehicle dwell time. Third, by increasing the efficiency of the system, these system modifications have a potential for increasing ridership.